Grupero Murders: Gang Execution or Part of a Border War?

Murdered singer shot, execution-style

Another grupero singer has been murdered in Mexico. Twenty eight-year-old Zayda Pena was shot dead in the back, gangland style in the emergency room of a Matamoros, Mexico, hospital. This after she had been treated for a gunshot wound to the back from an altercation the day before.

Pena was one of several grupero singers and band members who have been recently gunned down in gangland slayings in Mexico.

Peña — the front woman in a band named Zayda y los Culpables, or "Zayda and the Guilty Ones" — enjoyed a following on both sides of the border playing music known as grupero, which features basses, electric guitar, drums, accordions and synthesizers.

Grupero lyrics focus on love, unrequited or not, and on the exploits of narcotics gangsters and other borderlands themes. The genre's bands are popular draws in dance halls across provincial Mexico. Gangsters are said to be among the bands' many fans. [1]

A year earlier another singer, Valentin Elizaide, was shot after performing a concert in the border town of Reynosa, 60 miles north of Matamoras, the site of Pena's death.

In February, four members of another grupero band were shot to death after playing a hall in central Michoacan state, where much of this year's gangland violence has occurred.

Another popular grupero singer was gunned down in a Michoacan park last December.

Mexican newspapers last weekend reported that the lead singer of yet another band went missing Saturday, along with two businessmen, following a performance in Morelia, the Michoacan state capital. [1]

The rampant violence along the Texas-Mexico border is due to the presence of a drug cartel known as the Gulf Cartel. President Calderon ordered hundreds of troops over the weekend to Reynosa.

Pena was another of the nearly 2500 victims who have murdered in gangland violence this year.